l u c a s  g e r i n ⁄f e l i x  n a g l ⁄t h i l o  r u c k


Die Klavierübung - Steven Takasugi

Version for Pony Says
(Percussion, Guitar, Piano and Electronics)


Premiere @Eclat-Festival 2022, Stuttgart

Audio & Video: Eclat-Festival / Musik der Jahrhunderte



Steven Takasugi: “When I was composing Die Klavierübung (with digital piano samples, no live performance initially) in my Vienna days, the notion of a Klavier Selbstmord accompanied me everywhere and plagued me to no end. Now, I’m not being cavalier about the very serious notion of mental illness in this regard. The idea is a personal one of course, but as I told a good friend once, you can do things in art…such as self-obliteration…that you cannot do in life. Truth is, it was as if the piano, exhausted with its repertoire and its long and illustrious history, was asking me most emphatically, “Why are you writing another piano piece?! Requiescat in pace. Let me rest in peace already!” I must confess, this idea came to me here in Stuttgart, at the Academy Schloss Solitude. The palace proper was undergoing major renovations and to educate the public, the rotting wood and crumbling plaster of the internal structure were put on display, as well as the exorbitant costs of the renovations, which had not been procured at the time. This served as advertisement for financial support no doubt. No one lived in the castle proper, but on sunny days in summer, it served as the backdrop for staging wedding photos: it was as if the castle also had to smile for the camera, and I felt sorry for it…this old castle that had witnessed so much history and was frankly, tired…naturally exhausted, rotting from the inside out, but was being forced to stand up straight and say “cheese” at the photographer. And analogous to this, there was something in the selfish idea of keeping the piano alive, that the instrument…now so infected and infused with its newly digitalized underpinning…a digitalized fabricated grin, so to speak…that it didn’t recognize itself as piano, as human anymore.”

Revised extract from a lecture entitled “JNH: Just-noticeably Human: Lecture on Musical Humanness in the Age of Digital Automation” for the Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf, October 18, 2021.
The Ideal Hour / Collages for Tom -
Jessie Marino

for/in collaboration with Pony Says




Premiere @Eclat-Festival 2022, Stuttgart

Audio & Video: Jessie Marino & Eclat-Festival / Musik der Jahrhunderte


Portfolio: Pony Says Takasugi/Marino

In the beginning, Pony Says and Jessie Marino still face each other as strangers. Through a shared listening experience, a collective associative space and thus the basis of the artistic collaboration is created. Marino chooses for this 'listening session' the album Pieces for Kohn (1976) by Tom Hamilton, in which the US-American composer directly refers to paintings by the artist Bill Kohn. Based on the impressions of the electronic compositions, Pony Says and Jessie Marino enter into an associative exchange in Collages with Tom. As a collectively acting quartet, composer and musicians translate listening experiences into a musical approach to Pieces for Kohn. The range of actions extends from mere imitation, to sonic response, and finally to full musical emancipation.
This process simultaneously shapes the musical setups of the performers, whose sounds refer sometimes more, sometimes less explicitly to the original: From 'classical' electric guitar setups, to digital synthesizers, to explicit sampling, Collages with Tom richly declines the sonic relationship the performers have formed through listening together.



negative space A - Yiran Zhao 

for Pony Says - with electric guitar, electronic drum set, synthesizer and video

premiered @ Pony Says Club#4

more about Pony Says Club .
line-up Pony Says Club #4:
Pony Says, Yiran Zhao, Somaticae

supported by Impuls Neue Musik and Kulturamt Stuttgart 






 Schotten dicht - Neo Hülcker
for/cooperation with Pony Says

@Pony Says Capsules, Ackerstadtpalast, Berlin, June 2021

In schotten dicht, Neo Hülcker transplants three performers into an experimental arrangement of Plexiglas cabins spatially isolated from each other and microphoned. Contact with the outside world is only possible indirectly, with the help of gripping arms that interact with an instrumental set-up through holes in the front window.
In their isolation, the performers pursue physical routines, sometimes choreographed and synchronized, sometimes occurring as if by chance. A community in isolation presents itself to the audience. In the artistic examination of hygienic, political, socio-cultural and digital aspects, schotten dicht gets to the bottom of the question of how (self-)isolation acts as a factor in our social interaction.


Portfolio: Pony Says Capsules





Differenz/Wiederholung 6c - Bernhard Lang

version for E-Guitar, virtual DX7-Synthesizer, E-Drums and Loop-Generator by Pony Says

Video-Premiere @Südseite Nachts 2021



Mixing/Mastering: Matthias Schneider-Hollek
Video: Christopher Bühler
Bernhard Lang: “ ... Die Komplexität dieses Werkes mit dem Klangmaterial einer klassischen Rockband, ergab sich aus der Vermischung der Klänge mit den Loops als vielschichtige Komposition. Dabei wurde konsequent auf Live-Verstärkung gesetzt und damit ein kompakter Klangkörper erzeugt, der den Raum füllt.” 

“Die Verschiebung der Differenz in den Geist bzw. die Wahrnehmung des Betrachters, ist an sich eine Strategie des Minimalismus; die Konsequenz, welche der Minimalismus daraus zog, war die einer Reduktion der Differenz im wiederholten Objekt, um den subjektiven Differenzierungen Raum zu geben. Hier weicht Deleuzes Konzept ab: Wiederholung bedeutet für ihn nicht unbedingt ein Einfaches, ganz im Gegenteil: Wiederholung kann Träger einer hoch komplexen inneren Differentiation im Objekt sein.” (siehe Bernhard Lang, “Repetition und Automatismus: die Bedeutung des Wiederholungsbegriffes in den Stücken der Differenz/Wiederholung-Serie”, 2002)“

source: bernhardlang.at